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The Path to World War II
The Rise of Dictators
Setting the Scene: Nuremberg Rally
The pride and unity of the Nuremberg rally hid the fact that people who
disagreed with Hitler were silenced, beaten, or killed.
Totalitarian Rule
• A totalitarian government exerts control over a
nation.
• It dominates every aspect of life, using terror to
suppress individual rights and silence all forms of
opposition.
• Hitler is an example of a totalitarian ruler. He
people gave him the power both willingly and
unwillingly, over a period of time until it was too
late.
• Hitler’s power rested on the destruction of the
individual.
Fascism and Communism
• Fascism emphasizes the importance of the
nation or an ethnic group and supreme
authority of the leader
• In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin based his
totalitarian government on a vicious form of
communism.
• Like fascism, communism relies upon a strong,
dictatorial government that does not respect
individual rights and freedoms.
Stalin’s Soviet Union
• Economic failure threatened Communist control
of the government, but Stalin took care of that by
jailing or killing anyone he deemed a threat.
• Stalin tried to take “one great leap forward” and
modernize agriculture.
• To do this, he “encouraged” Soviet farmers to
combine their small family farms owned and run
by the state.
• This didn’t work out to well because people
resisted so he simply began to take the farmers’
land away.
Stalin Punishes Uncooperative Farmers
• Stalin was upset that some farmers, especially
in the Ukraine were not cooperating. So he
confiscated the crops they had produced.
• As a result, millions of people died from
starvation, and millions of others fled to the
cities.
• Stalin also sent around 5 million peasants to
labor camps in Siberia and northern Russia.
Industrialization is More Successful
• Stalin’s pursuit of industrialization was more
successful.
• He assigned millions of laborers from rural
areas to build and run new industrial centers
where iron, steel, oil, and coal were produced.
• The problem was that Stalin put all of the
money and labor into industrialization instead
of housing, clothing, and consumer goods.
The people suffered.
Stalin’s Reign of Terror
• During the economic problems, Stalin completed
his political domination of the Soviet Union
through a series of purges.
• In political terms, a purge is the process of
removing enemies and undesirable individuals
from power.
• It started in 1934 and ended in 1939. 7 million
people were arrested, a million were executed,
and millions more ended up in forced labor
camps.
• Most were innocent, but the purge successfully
got rid of all of his opponents.
Fascism in Italy
• As in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Italy’s
totalitarian government arose from the
failures of World War I.
• Benito Mussolini (Il Duce or “the leader”)
believed strongly that the Versailles Treaty
should have granted Italy more Territory.
• Mussolini followers included dissatisfied war
veterans, opponents of the monarchy,
socialists, and anarchists.
Mussolini Takes Over
• Mussolini relied on gangs of Fascist thugs,
called Blackshirts to terrorize and bring under
control those who opposed him.
• When he threatened to march on Rome, the
king panicked and appointed him Prime
Minister.
• Mussolini fixed Italy’s big economic problems,
but in the meantime he suspended elections
and outlawed other political parties.
Mussolini Attempts to Become
Caesar
• Mussolini had dreams of making a new Roman
Empire.
• A fascist slogan summed up his goals: “ The
Country is Nothing Without Conquest.”
• In 1934, he invaded Ethiopia. The Ethiopians
resisted fiercely but they were overpowered
by Italy’s army and poison gas dropped from
warplanes.
Mussolini’s East Africa
“Italy finally has its empire,” after the conquest of
Ethiopia. The letters A.O. are the Italian
abbreviation for East Africa.
Hitler’s Rise to Power
• While Mussolini was doing his thing in Italy, a
discontented Austrian painter was rising to
power in Germany.
• Hitler felt enraged by the terms of the
Versailles treaty, which stripped Germany of
land and colonies and forced Germany to pay
a huge debt for the damage done to France,
Belgium, and Britain.
• Hitler especially hated the war-guilt clause
The Nazi Party
• In 1919, Hitler joined a small political group
that became the National Socialist German
Workers’ Party or Nazi Party.
• Nazism is a form of fascism based on German
nationalism and racial superiority.
• Hitler wanted the German people to protest
against the embarrassing burden of the warguilt clause.
Mein Kampf
• In November 1923, with some 3,000
followers, Hitler tried to overthrow the
German government.
• Authorities easily crushed the uprising and
Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison.
• He ended up only serving 9 months and while
in prison he wrote Mein Kampf, or “My
Struggle”
Mein Kampf Gives Scary Hints
• In the book Hitler outlined the Nazi
philosophy, his views on Germany’s problems,
and his plans for the nation.
• According to Mein Kampf, Germany had been
weakened by certain groups that lived within
its borders.
• In particular, Hitler bitterly criticized the
nation’s Jewish population, which he blamed
irrationally for Germany’s defeat in WWI.
Mein Kampf Foreshadows
• The following is what Hitler proposed:
– Strengthening Germany’s military and
expanding its borders to include Germans
living in other countries.
– He called for purifying the so-called “Aryan
race” by removing from Germany those he
called undesirable.
Hitler Becomes Chancellor
• The Great Depression hit in Germany in the
early 1930s.
• The German people looked to their political
leaders for help.
• In response, Hitler and the Nazis promised to
stabilize the country, rebuild the economy,
and restore the empire that had been lost.
• Hitler’s promises gradually won him a large
following.
The Election of 1930
• The Nazi party became the largest group in
the Reichstag (the lower house of the German
parliament).
• Hitler placed second to Paul Von Hindenburg
in the presidential election.
• In 1933, Von Hindenburg named Hitler
Chancellor, or head of the German
government.
The Reign of Terror Begins
• Hitler soon moved to suspend freedom of
speech and freedom of the press.
• Thousands of Nazi thugs, called storm
troopers or Brownshirts, waged a violent
campaign that silenced those opposed to
Hitler’s policies.
Using Terrorism to His Advantage
• In March 1933, the Reichstag building burned
down in a suspicious fire.
• Hitler blamed the Communists and used the
disaster to convince the parliament to pass an
Enabling Bill which gave him dictatorial
powers.
• When Hindenberg died in August 1934, Hitler
became both Chancellor and president.
• He gave himself the title Der Fuhrer (“the
leader”)
Germany Begins to Mobilize
• The Germans begin secretly spending money
on rearming and expanding the armed forces,
a violation of the Versailles Treaty.
• They also hired unemployed workers to build
massive public buildings and a network of
highways known as the autobahn.
• Unemployment fell to nearly zero, industry
prospered, and by 1936, the Depression had
ended in Germany.
Hitler Wants to Expand
• Like Mussolini, Hitler saw expansion as a way
to bolster national pride.
• He believed Germans needed more territory,
or “living space”, to the east.
• He planned on conquering eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union.
• First, he needed to show military force with
Germany’s own borders and reclaim the
Rhineland.
German Aggression
• The Rhineland, a region in western Germany
was the place where Germany had its base for
the 1914 attack on France and Belgium.
• As a result of the Versailles Treaty, Germany
had agreed to not have any military in this
region.
• Hitler said, “whatever, I do what I want!” and
he re-militarized the area.
• France and Britain appeased Hitler because
many thought the Treaty had been unfair and
they had not forgotten the horrors of WW I.
Axis Powers and More Expansion
• Hitler teamed up with Mussolini’s Italy to form
the “Axis Powers.” They were later joined by
Japan.
• Hitler then set his eyes on his homeland of
Austria for political union with Germany.
• When the Austrian Chancellor refused to
surrender his country to Germany, Hitler
ordered German troops into the country.
• When France and Britain complained Hitler
said it only concerned the German people.
Appeasement
• Then Hitler set his eyes on the Sudetenland, an
industrial region in western Czechoslovakia with a
large German population and many fortifications
crucial to Czechoslovakia defense.
• Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, and
France’s Edouard Daladier, were not prepared to
fight a war. So they met with Hitler and let him have
the Sudetenland if he would agree to stop
expanding.
• British crowds cheered Chamberlain upon his return
home for achieving what he called “peace in our
time.”
Spanish Civil War
• The Spanish Civil War was a fierce battle between
two groups called the Nationalists and the
Republicans.
• This is important because it allowed Hitler to test out
his military force in Spain before he started WWII.
• Germany and Italy helped out the Nationalists with
planes, tanks, and soldiers.
• Germany drew the attention of the world when they
bombed the Spanish town of Guernica to ruins.
• It was a preview of the destruction that would strike
hundreds of cities in Britain, Germany, Poland, and
other countries a few years later.
Check for Understanding Questions
1) How did Stalin Change the Soviet Economy?
2) How did Stalin Change the lives of the Soviet
people?
3) Why did many people support Hitler and
Nazism in the early 1930s.
4) Why did Britain and France pursue a policy of
appeasement with Hitler?
5) How did leaders of totalitarian states feel
about using force against people and nations
they considered their enemies?